Wow, it's been 3 weeks since I've had any new harvests to share which is a solid indicator of my garden this year. The constant rains and little sunshine have wrought havoc on many plants. Anything I have still in containers (whether temporarily for transplants or permanent such as potatoes) is suffering from too much water and I'm constantly tilting over containers to remove excess water. That's one reason why I have harvested 2/3 of the garlic crop as shown above - it just seems too wet and I didn't want to risk any rot. I've left the smallest of them in for another couple of weeks.
So far, I have harvested only 8 kg of food, with more than half of that rhubarb (and mostly frozen, not eaten). And the garlic scapes make a large proportion of the rest.
But I have finally had my first (small as it is) harvest of greens.
Lettuce, arugula and spinach seem to be suffering the most with the rain and lack of sunshine. My entire harvest from yesterday has a bit more variety, but somewhat embarrassing in quantity. And quality ... the cherry tomatoes in the upper left-hand corner are destined for the compost bin - they are stunted and too tough to eat.
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| A few tomatoes, potatoes, berries and hot peppers |
But the squash plants (both summer and winter) are looking well as are the carrots and a few other crops, so I still have faith in this gardening season! In the meantime, some parting shots of the bunnies and wild turkeys who lurk about my yard when I'm not actively outside.
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| One of two adult bunnies ... which means there may be many more! |
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| Two adults and five babies this year |
I look forward to checking out Harvest Monday posts at Our Happy Acres to see what other gardeners around the world are doing this week!
That's a nice looking harvest of garlic, and the scapes are abundant! I'm assuming there was some time between the picking of the scapes and pulling the bulbs, or do you have a special technique? It looks like you will soon be having good harvests of summer vegetables.
ReplyDeleteThe garlic scapes were at least three weeks ago, maybe four (I haven't posted since end of June). And I probably pulled the garlic 1-2 weeks early. So I would think most years I would have 4-5 weeks from onset of scapes to final harvest ... does that make sense? I've never really tracked that!
DeleteI think too much rain is way worse than not enough. It sounds like our weather last year, when things were rotting from all the rain. I'd say your garlic is indeed safer out of the ground!
ReplyDeleteI agree. I can work with low rainfall as I'm on a very healthy private well. But without major irrigation techniques, it's hard to control too much rain ...
DeleteOy - looks like your season is shaping up to be as bad as mine. That's so sad about the tomatoes :( Hopefully mine end up being ok but it will be a while before I find out as they are nowhere near ripe yet.
ReplyDeleteI suspect you are having a similar season, what a year Margaret!!
DeleteOh my, what a tale of garden woe, you must be pulling your hair out in frustration! I would be screaming at the weather gods. I agree with Dave that too little rain is preferable to too much, that's a normal summer here! But still, I envy your garlic harvest, I gave up on it because of recurring rust infections. It's weird to be buying garlic, especially when it is coming all the way from Argentina such as the last couple of heads that I bought, which I wouldn't have except that I was desperate for garlic. Good luck, I'll pray to the weather gods to give you a reprieve.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually my last (planned) year for garlic so I'm glad I didn't end off with a season of leek moth damage - just needing the space for other plants with higher yield. I'm glad I had a few good years of it!
DeleteThat's crazy the amount of wildlife on your property, it must be cool to see the turkey chicks running around. We get wild rabbits and possums even with living in the suburbs . It looks like you're getting a variety of vegetables, but all that rain is just awful.
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